Chapter Text
“Hey! Yeah, there he is! Buddy, Richie, listen, I think I got him, man. I think I killed it! I did! I think I killed it for real!”
Richie’s vision swims.
Beverly manages to look beautiful. Waxen skin and crimson-stained lips. It nearly looks like lipstick, but the hard sheen on it looks too plasticky, too shiny. Flickering lights in the cistern. Flickering lights of flashing cameras, the one event they’d unwittingly attended together, some bullshit style celebration in LA that Richie had absolutely no business being at.
Red lips, red hair, red prints circling her wrist when her bracelets moved just so. Splitting pain lanced behind his eyes just looking at her. He’d thought it was her perfection, the strength he’d mistaken as pretension, all of the red . He’d hated the color. He’d hated it for a reason that eluded him, probably tucked away in that little elusive box with the childhood trauma and memories.
He hates it. He still hates it.
He hates how it congeals in her hair, how the red mats and slicks it. How the bruises on her arm turn darker and darker and travel up her skin, until her whole body is blotchy red-violet with fingerprints. He hates the way it bubbles and laps at her cyanotic lips and the way it dribbles down her chin...
Ben is in pieces.
Like he was when he was a child: broken and torn to smithereens because he cared too much. Always reaching. For companionship, for a friend, for a hug, for an affirmation. Reaching for the unattainable. He thought he was too fat, too unloveable. Truthfully, Ben was always too good. As a kid Richie liked to think that one day Ben may just fall apart, that just too much kindness was stuffed into one short body. Not that he’d ever say it, not in twenty seven or a million years.
Ben is in pieces.
And the arm is still reaching for Bev, maybe a foot from her body and another two feet from his own. Or his torso, at least. Richie lost track of his head after the fucking clown showed him just how you amputate a waist. He couldn’t tell if the fact there was almost no blood was less or more disturbing. On closer inspection though, the more pieces Ben breaks into, the more blood mats in Beverly’s hair, the more blood bubbles up in her throat and stagnates her screams. It starts dripping down her dress...
Big Bill was always strong enough to hold them all together.
Ben is still in pieces.
Bev is still bleeding.
As a kid Bill was always the strongest of them, the one with the most fire in his heart. He would’ve been one hell of a playground Romeo if he could’ve gotten his sh-shuh-shit together. He towered over Eddie, over Richie, even over Stan for a time. At the ripe old age of six, Bill had always seemed so big to Richie.
He was Big Bill , with all the ferocity in his heart to match. He would babble on and on about his new little brother. Baby Georgie Denbrough who, in Richie’s opinion, was so tiny and thoughtless that he was more of a doll or a hairless rat than a human person.
But Bill seemed so big and mature when he talked about taking care of Georgie. He seemed all grown up when kids broke Richie’s glasses clean down the middle, and he taped them together. He always was so big when he’d sit silently in a crummy bathroom stall with Richie, who’d curse the world for mean old fifth graders in blubbering sobs.
Bill always seemed so big.
And now, crushed into the ground in a bloody heap, limbs contorted and twisted at grotesque angles, he looks small.
Bill is so small.
Bev is covered in blood and bruises.
Ben is in pieces.
And Richie is barely keeping it together.
The horrific images of his friends remain, laboring through their personal hells, even as Mike’s screaming pulls Richie into another nondescript plane.
His skin is peeling away like pieces of onion in hot oil, his face is contorted and gaping to reveal every inch of the soft tissue of his mouth. His eyes bubble, his tongue sizzles. Mike screams and screams until no sound comes out but a gurgle. He disintegrates into something between mud and entrails—goey coals that oxidize to white ash, before congealing and smoothing over. It takes Richie a second to realise, much to his horror. It was paper. Newspaper. The block letters of the main story dripped, as if it had been printed with far too much ink. “Madman Can’t Take the Heat”
Richie picks up the paper gingerly, but it disintegrates in his hands, covering his skin in an endless outpouring of ink. It burns Richie’s skin like lava, but he is unable to make any sound.
Fuck! MOTHERFUCKING SHIT!
A blood-curdling screaming resonates through his temples, threatening to make his brain explode.
Its Mike’s.
Richie prays it’s done. Prays that Eddie has enough sense in that big fucking brain of his to stay clear of the carnage, that Eddie knows how to keep himself safe. He prays, for once, that he was wrong. Wrong when he called Eddie’s totally-fake, invented-before-fun job a load of bullshit, and that Eddie will analyze the shit out of this risk.
Where the fuck is Eddie? Where the fuck—
“Richie?”
The voice washes over him, trembling and scared with just an edge of relief, a hint of fondness.
It’s been decades, but Richie knows that voice.
His first friend, his confidant, his first target of affectionate teasing.
Flashes of memory flit past Richie in a nauseating blur: shared Shabbats and fumbled Hebrew.
The air is hot and humid and sticky, and Richie’s hair is frizzed out in approximately one thousand different directions in its best Doc Brown impression No matter how much Mags frets and smooths at it, it always puffs out with a vengeance, like an angry cat. Richie’s new solution — a double digits innovation — is to use his grubby ice cream fingers to matt it down and slick it back like a baby mobster.
A soft scoff of disgust pulls him from his genius work.
“Glida.”
Richie startles, gaping at his friend. He clutches at his imaginary pearls. “Stanny, did you just call me a naughty name? I expected—”
“It’s Hebrew. It means ice cream, dummy. You’d know that if you ever listened to me when I told you important stuff.”
Burnt latkes that he’d smile at and eat anyway because they made them, together . Always with applesauce and sour cream. No more, no less, and Richie knew he’d never budge on it. Martinelli toasts and snuck sips of champagne that would make Richie giggle into the early morning hours.
Fact upon fact upon fact about birds he pretended not to listen to—
Richie’s eyes flick up at his pacing friend briefly, his nose buried behind Captain America #354. It’s the brand-fucking-new June edition, and Richie hadn’t had a chance to get his hands on it before now because of the whole murder-clown situation. Super Patriot turned Cap turned fucking US Agent. Guy’s having a full identity crisis and it’s starting to be a snoozefest. When it came to backing Cap up, Richie would take Wilson over Walker any day, and Falcon’s absence is really taking him out if it.
Richie looks again. Stan’s wearing a rut into the dirt floor of the clubhouse, and—
“I just don’t know how they do it!”
“Well, you said it yourself. They’ve got these huge fuckin’ noggins and tiny crackhead bodies. Maybe it’s for all of the brain power,” Richie deadpans into the pages, upset with god and all the writers.
All of them. Even those unrelated to this absolute let-down. Mark fucking Millar suck my dick.
“I did not say ‘crackhead bodies’—”
“It was implied! The implication was there!”
Stan’s eyes roll into the stratosphere.
“As I was saying. The black capped chickadee—which is the state bird, by the way. You should know these things, Richie—” Stan pokes him in the shoulder.
“stores items for safekeeping, right? But never in the same spot. They remember thousands upon thousands of locations and never forget a single one—”
“Well I guess it’s just that important to them to remember.”
Richie can’t believe he ever forgot it.
He feels like he’s being pulled apart, everything is moving so fast, until it still again. It’s dark as sin, but the eerily cold and flickering yellow lights begin to illuminate the scene. Bill is a crumpled pile of bones and gore, his head folded at a sickening angle, his legs cracked in one too many places. The pieces of Ben lay suspended in the air like shards of glass in a motion capture shot of a breaking window. Mike’s ashes swirl around in a dusty, lifeless cloud. Upon closer inspection, the larger pieces are flecks of skin and soft tissue and teeth and...Richie can’t look closer. Bev is floating above the tub, her body suspended towards the sky, skin mottled with dark bruises. A pristine virgin sacrifice, with her eyes to god or whatever monster wanting to rip her limb for limb. Blood pools into the tub below Bev’s feet, puddling around Stan.
Of all of them, he’s the only one alive, his chest rising and falling gently as he stares blankly ahead. There isn’t a scratch on him, but he is mostly naked, save the children’s tighty whities they’d all strip down to before jumping in the quarry. Forced calm washes over his face as the blood slowly rises to envelop his thighs. Stan is alive, but he is not living, not in any sense of the word. He is trapped in catatonia, staring up at the same empty sky as Bev.
Richie’s stomach turns, and the whole scene turns in circles. Pieces of Ben crash into Bev, knocking her around roughly. Bill’s limbs smash into each other like sweaters in a tumble dryer. Bits and pieces of Mike land in the bloody pool like nuclear fallout. The blood sloshes over Stan’s still frozen body.
Its barely more than a whisper. “Richie? Bill?...Mike? Ben?...Bev?..Eddie?”
Eddie.
His name is enough to snap him out of it.
Richie’s acquired a general distaste for the haughty vegan-juicer-yoga-mom LA lifestyle. It’s a fucking travesty, after all. But after seeing that much filleted skin he’s heavily considering converting. That shitshow was like a religious fucking expirience to draw him to the dark side, toward vegetarianism. He doesn’t know if he can look at a cut of meat now without seeing his friends' insides.
Phantoms of electrical currents travel up and down his prone form, warmth leaching from his flesh, until he loses all sensation. Everything goes suddenly, terrifyingly dark.
He falls to the rock below with a hard thud that rattles his bones in their sockets, but whether the fall rattled him more than what he saw is still up in the air.
Unlike him. God, he’s fucking hilarious.
The blackness is so black it looks viscous, like the air is replaced with blood... no , that’s because there’s blood dripping down his forehead.
That’s real. Fucking clown.
His back aches something awful, and Richie opts to blame his traitorous, thinning cartilage for that. He briefly mulls over completing his “mother fucker ” from earlier, since the eldritch-monster-whatever decided to step on his moment and pull him into the deadlights. All that clown shit and no appreciation for legendary comedic delivery and timing!
What a little bitch.
Richie is snapped out of his introspection by a warmth looming over him.
Hey. Eddie is effectively straddling him, which is new.
Eddie looks happy. Gleeful, almost, in the most pure way. His face stretches in the same smile he always had when he told his mom to fuck off. It was the expression Richie always aimed for with his jokes. Eddie shines with the same self-assured pride as the time he nearly stood up to Bowers for him and cursed out his back from afar. It was the smile he missed so much, like a phantom fucking limb, though he hadn’t known it. The smile that made his heart flutter no matter how many times Richie told himself to cool it.
His grin is so wide that his cheeks poke out. Like two round little apples sitting atop the corners of his lips. Like he was a kid again. Eddie’s shaking slightly: coming down from adrenaline or the abject terror of seeing Richie in the deadlights. And he is beautiful . Richie’s jaw slackens momentarily in awe.
Then Pennywise lunges.
And Richie reacts.
He pulls Eddie aside and covers him with his body.
The moments stretch on like hours, and Richie thinks. He’s okay if this is it, if this maybe is Richie Tozier’s last hurrah. Or only hurrah. And maybe he’s afraid of dying without ever having told Eddie certain... things …but it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters but Eddie, Eddie’s hand on him, Eddie beaming triumphantly. He looks so much like his 13 year old self that Richie vows to savor the moment forever. He missed that dastardly youthful face, even when he didn’t remember what it was he was missing. Those big eyes, so innocent, even in the face of overwhelming danger and abuse and the deep loneliness of an unfulfilling life. And he is so brave .
Richie can endure anything so long as Eddie makes it out unscathed. As intact as possible, at the least. Alive, at the very fucking least. Was that so much to ask?
Eddie, skewered by the clown. Eddie, with blood burbling from his lips in a cruel mimic of the grin he wears now. Eddie, being dragged away and calling weakly for Richie. Eddie, limp in his arms, all glassy eyes and absently hung jaws and gone gone gone.
The sudden piercing pain in Richie’s stomach is excruciating, until suddenly, there is no pain at all. That’s even worse. Why doesn’t it fucking hurt anymore? His hands grip at his middle and meet tapered calcified flesh.
Oh.
Eddie startles back, covering his face and shrinking away from Richie. Then, he looks up.
It went through Eddie’s chest, but I’m taller. Huh. Should have thought about that more.
“Eddie?,” he lets out weakly.
“Richie?” He is paper thin ice on the surface of a pond, his eyes fixed on Richie’s face. If he looks anywhere else he will plunge into a frigid embrace of something horrific. His hand drifts up to hold Richie’s cheek, freezing halfway there and shaking violently.
“Eddie. ” He looks down at the claw.
“R-Richie...” it punches out of him, as if Eddie’s voice is so lost that the words truly have nowhere to go. His voice cracks. The ice cracks, and Richie sees him slip under.
The blood is everywhere. Richie clamps his hand over the gaping hole in his abdomen; it leaks through his fingers in little spurting rivers. Eddie’s face contorts in dawning panic, the lines of his face disturbing rivulets of arterial spray. The hope fades from his expression like a wisp of hot air, and tears begin to dribble down his cheeks, making clear lines through the red.
Fuck, Eds is not gonna like that.
It briefly dawns on him how ridiculous the thought is, how unwarranted, as the clown throws him a few feet. Here Richie is, shirt tacky with blood, consciousness planning a permanent vacation, and he’s concerned about Eddie’s hemophobia. It’s almost comforting; at least his priorities haven’t changed.
The blood flows warm over Richie’s skin and stains his hands, and even if he survives, Richie is certain that the dark, pooling red will stain his memory permanently. Not unlike wine on a bright white kitchen tablecloth, or grease on a new coat.
Better me than Eddie.
“Oh god, oh fuck, shit, Rich? Richie?!”
There’s an incessant tugging at his arm. Over and over and over, and it becomes more of a constant to him than his own heart’s sluggish thud . He feels like he’s being split in two—not the greatest mental imagery at the moment, what, with him almost being fucking bisected by a clown a moment ago, but his subconscious is wearing the big boy pants right now. The world liquifies around him, light bleeding and biting into his retinas. Sound swells around him like an incoming tide: raucous static and inexplicable calm cram together into a single moment, and it makes him feel nauseous.
See, shit like this is why he never partook in coke. This shit exactly .
Eddie drags him to the side in the same fashion Richie did to him in another life. The ride is bumpy, but whether that's due to the terrain or Eddie's shaking is anyone's guess. Regardless, at every jostle Richie involuntarily cries out. Or whimpers. Which all really sucks for the toughened, overly masculine, very much heterosexual front he's been going for.
Eddie starts shedding his dumb dad cardigan (nice) and plasters it over the wound. Richie’s heart jumps a little seeing Eddie’s bared, surprisingly toned arms. Not that it’s currently important. Not that he’s watching how the fabric of his shirt folds around the muscles in his neck and shoulders. Not that he’s gay for Eddie fucking Kaspbrak and always has been.
His heart skips another beat as Eddie lifts his shirt up to look at his stomach. He knows it's not... like that— what am I, twelve?— but he can’t help but imagine. His eyes widen at Eddie. He never knew you could have butterflies in your stomach at 40 years old, especially when there’s a hole straight through it.
Fuck. Right. There’s a hole straight through my stomach.
Eddie pokes anxiously at some of Richie’s eviscerated flesh. “I can see your intestines! I never wanted to see that! Shit, fuckfuckfuck, shit, Richie, this is really bad. This is really fucking bad.” His eyebrows furrow up as he tries to salvage it. Richie’s insides are becoming outsides, and that is very displeasing to the small, angry, frustratingly attractive man positioned over him and trying desperately to control his bleeding. Richie frowns at that.
“You definitely just lost a major artery, and if we leave it exposed you are going to get gangrene. The fucking greywater is swimming with extremely dangerous bacteria. You could get the bubonic plague—” Richie mouths weakly ‘the fuck, bubonic plague?’ Not your best material, Eds. “Who knows how long this godforsaken clown has been frequenting this cave. Have you seen rats? Sewer rats? Even then, you can get septic shock. Then you’ll almost certainly die, there’s no way we could get you to a doctor in time.” Eddie points aggressively in his face. “Don’t you fucking dare move this goddamn sweater, don’t argue.” His voice is high and strained, his words slurring together and slipping out even faster than usual. Eddie’s hand on Richie’s torso shakes.
Richie stares up at him, pressing the sweater to his stomach with a weak hand over Eddie’s. His vision starts to haze; his hearing fades to ringing. “A lullaby. Thanks, Eds.”
Richie thinks back to the blinding pain of the deadlights. Should I tell him?
“You know you told me,” Richie pats weakly at his chest, “that you fucked my mom. When we were here. It was really fucking rude.”
Don’t touch the other boys, Richie.
“ When we were here? What does that even mean, when we were here?”
“Yeah, they were your last words.”
“No they fucking weren’t! I’d say better! You’re the one who’s...who’s...”
Eddie’s voice chokes to silence.
Nice fucking going, Tozier! You made him depressed. Fix it.
His voice slightly slurred, Richie calls out to the heavens, “Mrs. K? Is that you?” Richie attempts a wolf whistle, shooting out blood-laced spittle with no sound. Fuck it . He cuts his losses. “You want me back for our usual time?”
Eddie scoffs. “You’re gross. Even my mom was too good for you.”
“You're right, Oedipussy. Forgive me.”
“I’m surprised you’ve read anything of literary significance.”
The banter lulls, and there’s a soft silence between them.
I know your dirty little secret, Richie!
Richie shoves it down, all of it, the fucking clown taunts and the way Eddie makes him feel.
Make him believe it’s all going to be okay, even if it’s not true. Even though you’re dying. You can give him that.
“‘Course I read. How else would I learn about all the lovely positions I could wrestle your mom into?”
Eddies face twitches in fond annoyance. The tears welling in his eyes never fall.
Good.
“Picture books, probably.”
“Mmm the Kasprasutra is all description, baby.”
“Beep beep, Richie.”
Eddie lingers by him, a hint of a smile at the corner of his lips. He knows Eddie won’t want to leave him alone, not like this, with everything so uncertain. Richie fights it. He smiles back, crooked and lethargic. His head lolls to the side more than once, and Eddie slaps him gently every time he nears unresponsiveness. As Richie sinks further into the brain fog, all he knows is that Eddie has to get off his ass and fight.
Richie is certain Eddie’s yelling at him: his mouth is wide and moving fast, but he can’t hear it. Eddie leans in close to his face, observing his movements, though Richie’s can’t make sense of it. His brain is spaghetti. Haha, Eddie spaghetti.
“Its...it’s okay now, Eddie… Eds, you’re alive . Now.” He breathes in deep, lungs screaming for air as he becomes more and more short of breath. He tries to smile through it, but it’s a broken, toothy grimace. “Go end that thing.”
Eddie gestures frantically. “I have to keep pressure on—”
“Go kill that fucking clown. For me.”
With that (and a playful kick to Eddie’s nuts), Richie manages to shoo him off.
Eddie screams. Not bloody murder, bloody “I’m gonna fucking kill you!”
His enthusiasm is charming. He can hear yelling, cacophonous and wrathful, but its distorted. His hearing is getting awfully fuzzy; Richie only catches snippets.
Bev floats above it all in a frantic, but reasonable, tone. “There’s more than one way to make something sm—”
Eddie’s voice, usually tentative, has no hesitation. “ I’m gonna kill you! I’m gonna stab you, and I’m gonna kill you! You dense motherfucking clown bitch! I won’t hesitate! ”
There’s the sound of large rocks clattering, and then metal hitting flesh.
“Take that, you stupid fuck! I’m not afraid of you!”
Its a shower of rocks now; Pennywise screeches.
“I am the eater of worlds!”
“Not to us you’re not.” Mike, alive and burning with something entirely within his control. Determination, finality. “You’re just a clown.”
“An imposter!” Bill, screaming at the top of his lungs. His voice fills cavernous room, vast and unapologetic.
“You’re a mimic!” Ben? It’s hard to tell. But he sounds sure, solid, unbreakable.
“You’re an old woman!” Bev? Her voice is clear and strident, no gurgle of blood distorting the sound.
“A lie. That’s all you are. A cautionary tale that doesn’t do shit for me anymore! You hear me? You don’t fucking scare me!” Eddie. Eddie .
Richie can feel his pulse throbbing in his torso. His vision blackens at the corners, a sickening vignette, but he has to say something. He can’t just sit on his ass and die, not when he can help, not when they need him still. His voice is weak as he grits out, “You’re nothing. I beat you, I—” a wave of excruitiating pain roils his stomach, “ fuck! ” Richie clings tighter to the wound, feeling his hand become damp and sticky.
Their chorus of belittlement crescendos, and Pennywise’s voice shrinks and withers until Richie can no longer hear it over the sound of the ringing in his eardrums. His fucking ears don’t even work right.
Everything around Richie starts to float. The blood sloughs off his hand like reverse raindrops, the light softens from harsh and flickery, which had been hell on the ache in his head, to gentle and lifeless. Everything starts to crumble away.
Detached and failing to register the implications, Richie murmurs a numb, “that’s nice.”
“Richie!?”
“Oh my god. Richie, honey?”
Richie registers only sound. It could've been words, or distressed cries, or shouts of triumph, or the fucking Braveheart speech, for all he knows; there’s no discernible difference. To cover all his bases, Richie croaks a feeble, “not dead yet.”
His fingertips are long since numb, the faint prickling creeping up his arms and legs. He just wants to sleep. Or wake up. He wants this nightmare to be over once and for all.
Richie still perks up when Eddie rushes to his side, not wanting to worry him all the way to an aneurysm. The gore-soaked pads of Eddie's fingers dig into his neck, seeking out his pulse. The lukewarm, viscous mystery liquid smears over his skin, but Richie lost the cognisance to care a while back. Eddie’s hands tremble slightly, then press into his throat with renewed vehemence.
Guess Eddie didn’t like what he found. Why would he?, a familiar voice from the depths of his thoughts taunts at him.
He looks a little weird around the edges, like someone tried to taffy stretch his face. And isn't that just absurd? Eddie has a nice face, no one should try to taffy stretch Eddie's nice face.
“Eds—”
"Don't fucking call me that. You know—” he pauses, takes a shaky breath, "you know I hate that."
"'M sorry Eddie. 'M sorry." Richie’s voice grows distant from shock.
"No—hey, wait it's—Richie. Hey. Come on, man, don't close your fucking eyes.” Eddie’s hand slides away from his throat, cupping his cheek in a tremulous hold. The pad of Eddie’s thumb sweeps over his skin in a measured, faux-calm motion. “Hey asshole—”
Another voice cuts in.
"Eddie, we have to—"
Bev? I like Bev. Love her, but not like Haystack does. Different.
"Shut up. We're taking him out with us. He's fine, see? Look. You're fine, Richie, aren't you? Huh, dipshit?"
Eddie gives Richie a hard, concerned shake. Richie guards his stomach more tightly, more blood leaking through his fingers. Why is there so much blood ? Richie's tired. He's so, so tired. The whole world is spinning like a bad trip.
"Love y'guys."
There's a hitch of breath. Richie’s world is crumbling too much at the edges for him to be able to pinpoint who it’s from. His skin is buzzing, though he’s unsure whether it’s the cold shock that’s bitten into his muscles and his nerves or the rumbling and heaving of displaced earth. His chest rattles with each breath. His ribs curl inward like a snare, spearing his lungs and shishkabob-bing his still-beating heart.
Richie’s pulse pounds in his ears, and he finally infers that if his pulse is still there, maybe his heart is as well. He’s narrowed it to two possibilities:
He is either
1. More grievously injured than he thought
or
2. Being really fucking emotional about the whole ‘dying’ thing
He spies Eddie’s face, screwed up in a grotesque expression of pain and panic when he thinks that Richie isn’t watching. It breaks Richie’s heart.
Ding ding ding! It’s both!
"Richie?” Eddie’s voice cracks, “Hey, come on—"
And the nice voice (Bev) cuts in again, "Eddie, we have to go now. This house is done for." Everything around them starts falling apart at a faster pace.
"Eds jus' go. S'okay. ‘Tis but a flesh wound.’”
Eddie doesn’t so much as chuckle. Fuck him, Monty Python is gold.
“Hey, this is the part where you say—"
Richie hisses “fuck” to avoid crying out, and Eddie tightens his grip. Eddie’s dumb little cheek bandage is splattered this time; fresh blood soaks happily into the gauze. Eddie jerks his hand up instinctively to wipe the blood away. It’s already settled in.
Richie lets out a mocking chuckle, closely followed by a cough. “Dear god, what if I’ve infected you with the funny gene. My blood is contaminating your DNA as we speak.”
Eddie deadpans. “Not how that works, asswipe.”
“As we can see, it’s yet to take effect. God forbid you grow a sense of humor. This is my final gift to you.”
Eddie growls. “Richie, I will leave you here if you keep this up.”
Richie ignores Eddie’s empty threat with a shrug. His spine twinges. Fuck, that hurt. Richie turns his gaze skyward, diverting attention from the gaping hole in his middle. He’d rather them be telling him to shut the hell up— Beep beep, Richie —than look at him like that .
Richie’s stomach drops. Hah. The sincerity of it all is too much to handle. The way Eddie looks at him like the next time he closes his eyes they won’t open again. Eddie, keep Eddie safe. Keep Eddie happy. Eddie…
Bill’s voice slides in. “G-g-guys is now really the time to—”
Richie’s head lolls to the side slightly: “I’m...mm... just stalling.”
They can’t know he’s scared, too. They can’t. He’s the funny one!
“I will fucking leave you here, Rich.”
Richie, grins, but his heart isn’t in it. “Just gotta soften the blow. Kick the bucket a little gentler. Flip off the spilled milk instead of crying over it, you get me?”
Eddie attempts to pick Richie up in spite of it all. “Come on trashmouth, get your shit together.”
Richie cries out softly. The jostling jumpstarts the wound again. The burble of blood had become sluggish, but the movement's revitalized it with a whole new fury, spilling onto Eddie’s hands.
“Fuck!”
Richie blinks and tries to rationalize being alive. He really thought he’d be dead by now; Eddie had been gone by now. Huh. Maybe it’s all the anger, or all the blood?
Eddie shoots Richie a ‘what the fuck are you thinking, man’ face before he winces in pain. Eds looks away from him, and he immediately feels the loss.
No. Don’t look away. I don't know if I’ll be here when you get back. You weren’t.
“Help me!” Eddies voice cuts through the fog. It always does, even when littered with small stutters of fear. Even when the sounds are clawing their way out his throat like a wounded animal dragging their broken body away from their torturer, begging for mercy. “He’s too heavy.”
Someone moves to pick up Richie’s legs; he can feel the fingers curl into his calves like vices. Petite fingers and manicured nails. Bev.
“Wait.” She squints at Richie, her death-grip loosening around him. “Honey, you’re crying. Did I hurt you?”
Richie wrinkles his nose, shaking Bev off and shrugging his face away. He looks at Eddie’s hands, a little ashamed.
“No. No it’s not–not over myself. What a dick move that'd be.”
His world tilts on its axis. This is really happening.
“Boo hoo I’m dying! Yeah, shut the fuck up.” Richie yells to nothing, his voice cracking, “you chose to do that, asshole!”
I’m crying over Eddie. What’s new!
“I’d really rather you not die, I still owe you a dick punch for ‘Kasprasutra’ earlier.”
Richie smiles, but his body goes limper. He doesn’t respond.
Suddenly, there are fingers threaded through his hair, cupping the back of his head. It’s funny, it really is.
Richie lives in funny. It’s comfortable and safe. Funny is sanctuary, funny is where Richie could hide feelings the world didn't want to see and still doesn't; funny is where he could mask them and make the undesirable parts of himself something people could smile at. Funny sheltered him from the sneered lips and the flying fists and the barbarous slurs. Funny sheltered him from everyone else, yes, but it also hid him from himself.
Funny meant other people laughing alongside him at himself, as a cruel penance. But funny has never hurt as much as it does now. It’s just so fucking funny that he’s here, in the arms of the man hes been pitifully in love with for his entire life, only now that his life is ending.
It’s so funny that the first time Richie Tozier truly lived was when he was dying.
Richie stares up at Eddie’s big, wide eyes. They’re beautifully round full moons gleaming against pure darkness. His words slur together—then again, everything is blurring together for Richie, but Eddie barely even sounds like Eddie. Richie had always assumed that Eddie’s voice would stand out amongst all others. “Richie? You alive? Don’t fucking die on me I swear... Richie ...Bev, help me.”
Bev slaps his cheek lightly. “Richie, you're upsetting him. You’re upsetting me. Please , Richie.”
Richie stares, completely unattuned to his surroundings. Pain pain pain… He can’t think about anything else. Everything is glassy and distant, even Eddie’s big, bright moon eyes and the tapping of Eddie hands on his face. He squints his eyes to try and see, but it’s as if someone’s poured water over the picture his mind has created. The ink is running everywhere, mixing and swirling into something kaleidoscopic and incoherent, a madman’s landscape.
There’s only nothingness. Richie can’t move, he can scarcely breathe, until he sees his friends' mounting panic. Bev’s hand on his cheek pulls him back to Earth.
"I tend to have that effect on people," He responds belatedly. He blinks once, his voice distant.
There’s a collective sigh of relief.
“Can you make this any harder?”
"I’m glad my imminent death gets you going, Eds. Communication like this is important—" Richie trails off, catching a glimpse of the distraught expression on Eddie’s face. Its chillingly pale and serious.
Eddie isn’t even phased. These jokes always work. They’re supposed to fucking work. There go his two contributions to the Losers Club: levity and a talent for getting under Eddie’s skin. They may as well leave him here.
Richie stares torpidly at Eddie. He’ll try again, then. “You’re not even trying anymore. That setup? Not even—” He has to swallow the surge of bloodly bile in his throat before he can continue, chest rattling laboriously “—fucking trying anymore. I’m ashamed.”
Eddie scoffs, a little annoyance mixing into his fear. “Saving my worst for when I have to piss on your grave.”
Richie brightens slightly. There’s my guy.
Then Eddie breaks down.
It’s an explosion of snot and tears and all the bodily fluids Eddie loathes.
His voice fades to a crackle. "Richie, please, if you die...I’m gonna fucking kill you.”
Richie winces; the pain slams him in more places than just his stomach.
Eddie is sweating profusely, and his breathing is fast. Richie can feel it as he casts a look at his abdomen.
"It got you through here." Richie presses a shaking palm to Eddie’s sternum. "Fucker really tried to–I–" His words stutter and catch in his throat. He can’t even say it. He can’t —
Calm down. This isn’t your funeral yet, Trashmouth.
And, hey, maybe this isn’t really the time to be thinking about Eddie’s bodily fluids, especially the one his mind keeps drifting to, but what a way to go out. He’ll never get to have him that way, anyway, so what does it matter?
Bigger and bigger pieces of Neibolt begin to float up. The ground shakes with an Eldritch dread, and Richie can’t hear the Losers, but he sees their mouths moving quickly, Bev and Bill’s hands flying. What are they fighting over? His head is pounding too much to think about it. Just fragments of words. Of sentences. Then Eddie presses on his cardigan, attempting to help him stand up, and Richie struggles to comply.
"Come on Richie let’s get out of here." Eddie, as carefully as possible, pulls Richie's arm around his neck to cart him out. Richie smiles softly. His thumb twitches along to the beat of his heart.
"Eds, you have to leave me. Wouldn’t be so bad, huh buddy? No more your-mom jokes and shitty nicknames. Pretty sweet deal."
Eddie’s voice turns grave. “Get up. this is non-negotiable. We are getting your ass into a hospital bed."
"This already happened in reverse. 'M telling you the only way you guys get out is to leave me. 'Sokay. I knew the risk I was taking."
Eddie freezes up, exclaiming, “Reverse? What the fuck Richie?”
"Eddie— "
Eddie snaps. “No. Stop. I don’t fucking care. We’re going.”
Bev's jaw ticks. “The deadlights. He’s talking about the deadlights."
Eddie screams. “He can’t fucking die!”
Ben swallows, looking to the other Losers. "Eddie, if the deadlights—"
"I don’t fucking care! We are getting him out of here! That clown can take it in the ass!" Eddie pulls frantically at Richie’s arm, even as his body collapses under the weight of him.
Pennywise-ass would turn that into another creepy fucking musical number to haunt me. ‘I can’t, but you can, Richie, heehee! Don’t you want to?’ Ugh.
Richie pushes at his face lightly. "C’mon asshat, don’t get them killed. Stan would hate your guts. I'll go tell Stan on you. I'm on my way right fucking now to tell Stan on you.” Richie turns his head towards Ben. "You 'n Mike had to drag me out. When it was him."
Eddie clings to Richie. " I am not leaving him here! "
Bev steels herself. "Richie, you said you reversed this? Then you've already changed it. We're changing it again."
Richie fumbles over the words. "You guys, I don’t—”
Bev snaps. "Beep beep, Richie."
He does just that.
Before he can tell anything’s changed or anyone’s left, Richie is being dragged out by Eddie, which — first of all— ow? Secondly, ‘Eddie drags him out’ is a pretty loose and optimistic interpretation on Richie’s part. He’s almost certain it was Ben and his abs, because he doubts Eddie’s noodle arms could manage all six feet of him.
He hears Mike and Ben arguing with Monsieur Spaghetti, but it's too difficult to separate who’s saying what. All his wires are crossed. Fried. Kaput .
“I can carry him!”
“We are not letting you slip a disc for your six foot one manchild.”
He loses time.
There are tidbits: Eddie holding him up and Eddie brushing his hair out of his face ( "cut this shit ") and Eddie holding his jacket against his stomach and Eddie, Eddie, Eddie.
Occasionally, there’s the odd Bev patting his thigh or Bill shouting at him not to “duh-d-die”.
That's not very nice, big Bill. Yelling’s not very nice at all.
Sometimes Mike will try to reassure Eddie , and isn't that a trip? Getting a hypochondriac to shut up about a life or death situation is like—he can’t think of a joke. He can’t really think at all.
Richie's eyelids are heavy, heavy as shit. He's starting to wonder how he ever managed to keep his eyes open in the first place, because eyelids are fucking heavy .
Eddie's voice drifts in and out. He's saying something. A lot of something.
Something like, “Don't. Don't you do that. Don't fall asleep. Stay with me, Richie."
Something like that; Richie's really just not paying attention anymore.
Richie's too busy smiling. He's smiling, and he knows his eyes are crinkled up because fuck they're old now, aren't they? But Eddie looks the same. He does; Richie swears it. His big panicked eyes and his dumb little voice and the quiver in his bottom lip. Fucking shit he loves this asshole. Still. He still loves this asshole, and it's been 27 goddamn years. At this rate, he’ll probably die loving him.
What a lifetime movie his life's become. Throw in a little dog and an orphaned Christmas-lovin’ kid and call him Hallmark.
Richie pulls his metaphorical head out of his ass because Eddie's yelling now, really yelling, and Richie thinks Eds might be shaking him.
If he's dying, Richie figures he's going to have a few words with Stan. Or maybe dickpunch him. Very gently. A cordial dick-punch-hug maneuver. How fucking dare Stan the man. How dare he just up and leave and not even give himself a fighting chance. How dare he leave them when he, when they all needed him. But, god, it'll be good to see him. He misses Stan. He—
It all fragments again. More yelling. Eddie sounds hysterical, and the concern that knots itself in his chest brings him back from whatever path he was going down, there.
One more look at Eddie, at Eds, and the world fades out.